Even J. G. v. Herder, the leading o

Even J. G. v. Herder, the leading opponent of Enlightenment
uniformitarianism, was no believer in radical alterity,
but only in the importance of culture and historical
traditions. His Hebrews, Greeks, Africans, Laplanders,
and so on had the same sorts of motivations and emotions
as all the rest of humanity, but he believed in the need to
understand the distinctive ways in which their social and
natural environments had formed their particular associations,
understanding, and reactions. Beyond the differences
that he wrote so much about, he believed fervently
in a common humanity (Humanitat), and he struggled to
combine and balance this with his view of cultural difference.
Barnard writes (1965:98), "Nevertheless the view
can be upheld and this is what Herder undoubtedly had
at heart that 'relativism' does not necessarily preclude
the sharing of certain common attitudes or 'propensities,'
sufficient for some degree of understanding between different peoples and generations,regarding the standards to
which they ought to aspire as human beings" (cf. the Boas
quotation, note 8).


Lewis Henry Morgan was a descendant of the Scottish
Enlightenment uniformitarians, and E. B. Tylor believed
that "the uniformity which so largely pervades civilization
may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action
of uniform causes" (1871, I:1). Tylor's approach to
the science of culture was influenced by the scientistic
uniformitarianism of Auguste Comte's positivism. Positivism
is, of course, now considered to be one more of
those intellectual structures of domination, but at least it
might be absolved from the sin of imposing radical alterity.


Franz Boas led American anthropology away from Enlightenment
and Victorian evolutionism but not toward
radical alterity. In The Mind of Primitive Man (191 1), he
argued that all human minds work very similarly, differing
only in the historically derived cultural materials with
which they have to work. in the same sorts of irrationalities,
fears, loyalties, and bondage to received ideas that one
might find in the primitive mind were to be found, for example,
in the minds of American undergraduates and
even in his own mind now and then. In fact he was quite
critical of "the judgment of the intellectuals, which is
much more certain to be warped by unconscious control of
traditional ideas"( [1918]1945:139). He felt strongly that
cross-cultural translation and understanding was possible,
indeed necessary.


Boas believed that anthropologists and psychologists
should study others (small o), and not only Westemers, precisely because he believed that our minds work similarly.
But, as he wrote in a review of a book by Adolph
Bastiano n cross-cultural psychology,


our reasoning is not an absolutely logical one but. . . it is influenced by the reasoning of our predecessors and by our historical environment: therefore our conclusion and theories, particularly when referring to our own mind,which itself is
affected by the same influences to which our reasoning is subject,
cannot be but fallacious. In order to give such conclusions a
sound basis it is absolutely necessary to study the human
mind in its various historical, and speaking more
generally, ethnic environments. By applying this method, the
object to be studied is freed from the influences that govern
the mind of the student[.1 887:284e, mphasias dded]


In other words, The Other R Us, and for that reason, in
studying others we are not studying some exotic life forms
but ourselves in different settings. If we fail to consider
peoples and traditions other than our own we distort our
understanding of what it means to be human. It is precisely
to guard against the very natural human assumption that
what "we" do, based on "our" culture and history, is the
natural, the only, the universal way, that we try to include
as much of the range of human behavior in our accounts
and theories as possible.


It is odd that this simple idea is no longer widely understood,
having been replaced by the notion that we study
"Others" in order to feel superior to them and dominate
them. It is remarkable that the lifelong vocation of Boas,
Benedict, Herskovits, Mead, and so many others, to combat
racism and ethnocentrism, once recognized as a central
element in American anthropology's legacy, is now
either ignored or made to seem ignoble.


My own introduction to anthropology in 1953 was in a
course by Robert A. Manners. Bob Manners and his cohort
(including Eric Wolf, Sidney Mintz, Morton Fried,
Elman Service, and Marvin Harris) were students of Julian
Steward and were part of that post-Boasian generation
that wanted to return to a particular form of Enlightenment
social science concerned with parallel sociocultural developments,
with cause and effect relations, and with the
search for laws in culture. Forty-five years ago, when I
studied with Bob Manners, I sensed considerable resistance,
discomfort, perhaps even hostility to the idea that
there are (or can be, or should be) deep-seated and longlasting
cultural differences between peoples. His was an
attitude as different from an insistence on radical alterity
as one can imagine. But it will not do to claim that this
small band was exceptional, that they were the only ones
who found Melville Herskovits's or Ruth Benedict's versions
of cultural relativism questionable. They were important exemplars and propagators of a well-established and strongly represented point of view in the anthropology
of the 1950s. In many ways it was a dominant view at
that time, but, to repeat, anthropology has always been
pluralistic.